The discovery was made during a routine examination for a persistent sense of obstruction.
My consultant asked whether I had noticed anything unusual.
“Only a growing feeling that I could have handled my life differently.”
She asked me to be more specific.
I mentioned the left nostril.
She adjusted the light.
Nasal ovarian activity is often identified incidentally. A patient presents with congestion, seasonal discomfort or the impression that something is quietly preparing, and examination reveals a small, organised reproductive structure beneath the inferior turbinate.
For many men, the first response is disbelief.
The second is to ask whether both sides are involved.
Mine were.
My consultant allowed a little time for this.
“Are they healthy?”
“Very.”
I found her enthusiasm difficult to share.
The question of potential
A nasal ovum contains the originating individual’s genetic material, held in a state of considerable readiness.
Under appropriate laboratory conditions, it may develop into a genetically matched individual: a further instance of the patient, with the opportunity to make his own arrangements.
This possibility tends to produce a brief period of optimism.
I was fifty-one. There were decisions I would have welcomed the chance to revisit. I had bought a conservatory in 2007. I had spent six years being loyal to a man called Graham.
“Would he remember any of that?”
“No.”
“Then how would he know?”
“He would have to find out.”
I began to understand why the consultation had been allocated forty minutes.
Quantity changes the question
Most public discussion concerns the deliberate creation of a single clone.
This reflects the reassuring influence of the word “single”.
The Nasal Propagation Estimate gives the number of potentially recoverable ova expelled during an ordinary sneeze:
P = ω × ν × ε
Here, ω represents bilateral ovarian activity; ν, expulsive volume; and ε, the proportion of the event that has not already happened into a cardigan.
The range is broad.
Even conservative estimates suggest that one unremarkable sneeze may contain sufficient material to establish a small residents’ association.
I asked whether all of them would be me.
“In a genetic sense.”
“And in the other sense?”
The consultant closed the calculator.
That question, she explained, belonged to a separate department.
Identity without recollection
The philosopher assigned to my case worked on Thursdays.
He asked what I understood by “myself”.
I gave my name.
He nodded in a way that suggested we had encountered our first difficulty.
A clone would share my genetic constitution, but not my memories, experience or present point of view. He would not remember my father. He would have no particular reason to dislike Graham. The conservatory would strike him afresh.
“Then he isn’t me.”
“What would make him you?”
I considered this.
“He’d probably stand the same way.”
The philosopher wrote something down.
We discussed psychological continuity, bodily identity and whether a person is a substance or an unfolding process.
By the end of the hour, I could no longer explain why the man who had parked my car that morning should be allowed to collect it.
The philosopher said this was progress.
A second chance for whom?
At home, my wife was practical.
“One of you is quite enough.”
I reported this to the ethics committee, who recorded it as informed dissent.
There were considerations I had overlooked.
A clone would begin as a child. Whatever second chance the procedure offered would belong to him. I would remain fifty-one, with the same conservatory and an additional dependent.
I could provide a different upbringing. More patience, perhaps. Less insistence on finishing things merely because they had been paid for.
But how much instruction would be fair?
Could I warn him against the mistakes I had made without turning his life into an extended correction of mine?
Would I let him work for Graham?
My wife asked whether Graham would still be working.
I said that wasn’t the point.
She said it was exactly the sort of point a parent needed to consider.
The duty to become
The committee’s second meeting concerned the moral status of an unrealised individual.
Once a possible life has been identified, does its originator acquire any obligation to bring it about?
The discussion remained abstract until someone referred to the tissue in my pocket.
I had been carrying it since the train.
A woman at the far end of the table asked whether it had been folded.
I said it had.
“Once or twice?”
The chair intervened. We were not, he reminded everyone, a handling committee.
Nevertheless, I placed it carefully beside the water jug.
That evening, I found I could no longer throw it away.
My wife discovered it on the mantelpiece.
“Is this something we’re keeping now?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“That’s becoming a decision in itself.”
I wished she had been available for the meeting.
The burden of resemblance
Men considering voluntary replication often describe a desire to see what they might have become under kinder circumstances.
The wish is understandable.
Its fulfilment may be harder to witness.
Suppose he flourishes. Suppose he is warmer, braver, less easily offended. Suppose he learns at seventeen something you have only begun to understand at fifty-one.
Would you feel proud?
Or would some small, unlovely part of you begin looking for evidence that he had been given an easier start?
The committee suggested I discuss this with my father.
I explained that he had died.
For the first time, no one made a note.
I have not proceeded.
The consent forms remain in a drawer with the documents for the conservatory. My wife knows where they are.
I still attend the clinic. The ovarian tissue is stable. My philosopher has moved to alternate Thursdays.
There are days when the possibility feels generous: somewhere within the machinery of an ordinary life, the capacity for another beginning.
On other days, I would prefer to blow my nose without acquiring a position on existence.
Last week, my daughter came round for lunch.
We talked about her work, the train service, a friend she was worried about. At one point, I began telling her what I thought she ought to do.
Then I stopped.
She waited.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Go on.”
She did.
For a while, I managed to listen without preparing a better version of her life.
When she left, my wife stood beside me at the window.
“You were good with her.”
I nodded.
Upstairs, the forms remained unsigned.